


Dream a Little Dream

by ohprettyweeper



Series: The Last Bandito [2]
Category: Trench - Twenty One Pilots (Album), Twenty One Pilots
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 20:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17649512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohprettyweeper/pseuds/ohprettyweeper
Summary: Quinn, Faylinn, and Josh all have dreams that affect them. Tyler adjusts to his new life, and Ildri encourages her cousin not to continue with her novel.





	Dream a Little Dream

Quinn Walsh shot up in bed, sweating and trying to catch her breath. The nightmares came often, but this one had been filled with so much blood and gore, it shook her to the bone. 

Throwing the blankets back, she threw her legs to the side and went for a glass of water and the pills that would erase the nightmare from her memories for the rest of the night. Looking out the window over the kitchen sink, she caught her reflection; even in the dim echo of her appearance, Quinn could see that the lack of sleep was catching up with her. 

Although she didn’t want to re-live the nightmare, and had already taken her sleeping pill, she decided to do what her therapist had suggested and jot down the major points of the nightmare before going back to bed. As Quinn wrote, she remembered more and more, until a desk calendar in the background of her dream screamed out the date from her memories. 

“My birthday,” she sighed, shoving the journal away and running a hand through the sweaty strands of her thick, strawberry blonde hair. 

This had been going on for close to eight years now and, try as she might to quell the thirst, nothing Quinn had done could sate the monster within her; that creature still showed her ugly, murderous face once every season. 

She tried for another hour to fall back asleep, but it was to no avail. As the sun peeked over the horizon and shed light on New Dema, Quinn threw back the covers and began to prepare for her day. 

* * *

When he woke up on that stone slab, the sanctuary was empty. His blood had been collected and cleaned from the floor, and not even one Bishop stood by to guide him into this new life. 

He sat up slow, trying to manage the rushing sensation in his brain. He blinked a few times, adjusting to the clearer vision that let him see every minute detail in his surroundings. The age of the temple became all the more clear with dust and cracks and crevices now apparent. 

The rushing sensation subsided, so he stepped onto the ground, feeling more stable, than he remembered feeling before — physically, anyway. With his newfound balance, he stepped away from the altar and took some tentative steps toward the door. The door opened, and a familiar face stood on the steps. 

“What happened to me?” he asked his friend when they both stood on the steps outside of the temple. 

His friend didn’t hesitate or hold back. “The Bishops smeared you, killed you, then changed you.”

It all made sense now. The clear vision, the stable balance. The overwhelming sense of _being_. 

“I’m a Heathen.” He said it out loud, as though he had never spoken the word before. 

Josh nodded. “Yeah, Tyler. You’re a Heathen. C’mon, I’ll help you move your stuff to where the rest of us stay.”

* * *

Faylinn was more than pleased with how her novel was coming along. She worked on it day and night, took a personal day from work and kept at it into the next day. Ildri had come and gone but Faylinn hardly noticed. 

Sometime after lunch, she decided it was time to take a break. She fixed herself a light salad, then settled on the couch. She stared out the bay window, willing the view of Old Dema to continue feeding her ideas and words and pages. 

When she woke, she was _in_ Old Dema. Her hands were tied behind her back and she was blindfolded. Horse hooves hit the concrete ground around here; they weren’t galloping but walking at an easy pace. Faylinn wanted to stop and take the blindfold off, get her bearings, but a hand gripping her arm kept her moving forward. 

A door creaked open, and Faylinn was led through it. The hand holding her arm seated her on a hard bench, then removed the blindfold. She saw now nine figures walking in a line toward the front of what appeared to be some kind of temple. They were wearing red, hooded capes, and their faces were painted white and black underneath thin veils of some mesh-like material. 

 _The Bishops_ , Faylinn thought to herself. 

She looked around the temple to see eight others sitting on the wooden benches, just as she was. All of them looked as confused and scared as Faylinn felt. 

The Bishops assembled in a semi-circle at the altar; for half of a second, silence reigned and time stood still. Then, the timeless men moved in unison, chanting words Faylinn did not understand. 

_Tse spohady, yaki vy budget trymaty._

The phrase was repeated nine times before the Bishops once again formed a line down the aisle that separated the two sections of benches. Each Bishop approached the human he had brought here until the Bishop was within arm’s reach of Old Dema’s new citizen. 

Cold fear gripped every fiber of Faylinn’s being. Her nerves fired off, telling her to run or scream or do something. But the stare of the Bishop’s eyes into hers held her in place, willing her to stay put. His hands reached out to her, relaxed but purposeful. The Bishop placed one hand on either side of her neck; Faylinn stopped breathing. His thick fingers pulled black lines over her skin, and the fear began to slip away. 

* * *

Josh woke with a start. The most real dream he had experienced in quiet some time, a memory of the day he had been brought to Old Dema. Of the Bishops doling out that first smearing and so easily convincing him of everything they wanted him to believe. He had not experienced this memory before, even when he tried. 

But instead of himself sitting there on that bench, it was a woman. He did not know her, but the moment the dream brought her image into his mind, he _wanted_ to know her. How had she appeared in his dream? If anyone ever came to him while he slept, it was the inhabitants of Old Dema, Bishops included. 

He threw his legs over the one-person cot that served as his bed, set his elbows on his knees, and ran his fingers through his sweaty hair. He worried that this may be some strange side effect of the serum, and for fear of what the Bishops would do with him if that were the case, Josh decided then and there to keep this dream to himself. 

* * *

Ildri read over the words on the screen while Faylinn paced nervously behind her. This was some of the best work of her cousin’s Ildri had read, but Faylinn was treading dangerous ground with this novel. 

“It’s amazing, Fay. Really.”

Faylinn clapped her hands excitedly and dropped to the couch. “You really think so?”

“It is. The smearing, the way the come for people in the middle of the night … it’s like you’ve seen it before.”

“I have,” Faylinn sighed. “I dreamed about it this afternoon. When I woke up, I put it into words. I feel so good about this, Ildri. I’ve been waiting for _months_ for the perfect idea for my novel and now I’ve found it and it’s flowing so easily, it’s almost effortless.”

Ildri stood from the desk chair and waited a few seconds before delivering her next statement. She didn’t want to hurt Faylinn, but her cousin’s safety was important to her. 

“I don’t think you should keep writing it.” 

Faylinn’s happy expression fell. “What? But I thought …”

“It’s amazing work, but you’re playing with fire, writing about Old Dema. The Bishops — they have weird ways about knowing about these things. We know the basics about the old ways so that we can avoid being taken, but you’re revealing details here that, true or not, were never meant to be revealed.”

“Oh please,” Faylinn said, rolling her eyes. 

“Faylinn,” Ildri said sternly, **“No good can come from this.”**

 **“Maybe from your perspective.** But for me, this is my big break. I know it is. I’m sorry that you can’t see it. You’ve got to stop living in the past — we all do — or the Bishops will control us forever, and the purpose of New Dema won’t be realized. We’ve been outside of the wall for centuries, but here we are, still governing our lives but what _they_ do. Not me, not anymore.”

Ildri watched her cousin storm away to her part of the apartment, leaving Ildri at the computer, trying to figure out how she was going to make Faylinn understand the hazards in publishing a book of this nature. 

As she meandered to the opposite part of the apartment, the part that was hers and only hers, Ildri thought over this conundrum. There was only so much about her job that she could share; her position as an assistant for New Dema’s highest government officials kept her in the know more than most but also kept her in high confidence. 

Without a solution to convince Faylinn of the importance of not continuing on and publishing her novel, Ildri got up to begin cooking dinner for the both of them, instead focusing on apologizing for perhaps making Faylinn feel Ildri did not support her. 


End file.
